A woman whose father died from Covid-19 after untested hospital patients were sent into his care home says she was 'emotional' after yesterday's landmark High Court ruling.
The court said the government acted unlawfully by discharging untested patients from hospitals into care homes during the early stages of the pandemic in this country. Judges said that policies contained in documents released in March and early April 2020 were unlawful because they failed to take into account the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from non-symptomatic transmission of the virus.
87-year-old Ronald McGoldrick was well and living happily in the Lighthouse Lodge care home in New Brighton, Wirral, in 2020. Although he was elderly and living with diabetes, his family said he was doing well until he suddenly fell ill with Covid-19. He died alone in hospital on April 21.
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The care home, run by the Athena Healthcare Group, had been locked down to visitors since early March because of the virus, with Mr McGoldrick's family unable to visit him for safety reasons. But from March 23, the home began admitting patients from the nearby Arrowe Park Hospital in a move to free up hospital beds.
In total 21 patients were moved into the home from the hospital. Both the care home and the NHS Trust indicated that while the patients arriving were not suspected virus sufferers, they had not necessarily been tested and proven not to be infected.
Mr McGoldrick's daughter Sharon Preston was not informed of the decision to move patients from Arrowe Park into her father's care home at the height of the coronavirus crisis - but she had heard rumours it was happening. Concerned, she tried to contact home bosses across the weekend of April 3-6, leaving multiple messages and sending an email asking for confirmation that Lighthouse Lodge was being used as a discharge unit for patients from Arrowe Park.
She received a response the next day from the then home manager who insisted that Lighthouse Lodge was not accepting residents who had tested positive for coronavirus. Ms Preston emailed back and asked how the home could be certain that none of the hospital discharge patients had not been exposed to coronavirus and asked for confirmation that they had all had negative test results for the virus. She did not receive a response to this email or to several follow ups.
She explained: ""After I asked that question I never heard back from anyone at the home. A week later I found out that my dad was poorly. One of the girls from the home called me to tell me they thought he might have a water infection and had been put on antibiotics by a daughter. I phoned him and he couldn't speak well, I could tell it was coronavirus straight away."
A few days later, on April 17, Sharon got another call, her dad had deteriorated and needed to go into hospital. \She said: "I spoke to him on the Sunday, it was really hard because he couldn't say much - but that was the last time I would see him alive." Mr McGoldrick died in hospital on Tuesday, April 21.
In 2020, the ECHO asked both the care home and NHS Trust about the actions taken when moving hospital patients into the care home. In a statement, the home said they admitted hospital patients as an order to free up NHS beds. When we asked whether all patients had tested negative before entering the homes, they said: "We were not advised of any suspicion of query of Covid-19 in relation to any of patients."
The NHS trust told us it had followed the Department of Health and Social Cate guidance at all times, including testing all patients 'from when national guidance was introduced.' It wasn't until mid-April that patients were routinely tested before being discharged to a care home. In fact, the government advice to hospitals prior to April 15 was "negative tests are not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home."
Yesterday's High Court ruling said that, despite there being "growing awareness" of the risk of asymptomatic transmission during March 2020, there was no evidence that ;then Health Secretary Matt Hancock addressed the issue of the risk to care home residents of such transmission, despite later claiming he had put a 'protective ring' around care homes. The SAGE scientific advisory group had said "asymptomatic transmission cannot be ruled out" in early February.
Despite this, both Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock sought to deflect blame yesterday. Mr Johnson told the Commons: "The thing that we didn't know in particular was that covid could be transmitted asymptomatically in the way that it was. That is something I wish we had known more about at the time." A spokesperson for Mr Hancock said: "The court also found that Public Health England failed to tell ministers what they knew about asymptomatic transmission.
Speaking about her dad after his death in 2020, Ms Preston said: ""He was proper old school my dad, he was a proud man but we always knew he loved us. He was a true family man, a loving and caring husband, dad and grandad."
"He was absolutely fine before this, I think he would have kicked along fine for a few years. He was healthy but with diabetes he was vulnerable to the virus, which is why I was so worried."
Speaking after the ruling, an emotional Ms Preston added: "My Dad caught covid in his care home and died alone in hospital we hadn't been allowed to visit for weeks before that. This was whilst people in government partied.
"It has been a very emotional day, but at least this has now been proven. I can't believe they are saying they were unaware of asymptomatic transmission. We all knew, so why didn't they? It's lies, lies and more lies. Hopefully this ruling will help to push the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice public inquiry forward."
